There was this one time when everything went right,
well almost.
I remember it like yesterday.
There I was at the 500 yard line shooting for qualification and I had nine rounds left to shoot and I might get a Sharpshooter medal.
Then it happened. The butts didn’t pull down my target after my first round.
It was a fairly simple equation: 10 rounds in ten minutes at 500 yards.
Ten in the black and I could earn a sharpshooter badge and rid myself of the dreaded toilet board, but I had to hit all ten in the black, at 500 yards.
But I was wearing my glasses today and got the last target on the firing line so that I wouldn’t shoot someone else’s target because I couldn’t read the numbers at that distance.
I knew that this time, on my last rifle qualification, I could do it.
I could shoot Sharpshooter.
To me it was the best looking of the rifle badges, a cross with a Marine emblem in the center.
Seven minutes went by and finally after begging for the target to go down, it does and pops back up almost immediately .
A bull eye’s
but I still have 9 rounds to fire in three minutes.
eight and a bull…
seven and a bull…
six and a bull…
five and a bull…
four and a bull…
three and a bull…
The PMI is actually dropping the rounds into my rifle to speed me up so I can get my last shoots off before the clock runs out…
two and a bull…
the last round fired…
“cease fire, cease fire, unload, clear and lock! make a complete safe weapon and move off of the firing line”
The target comes up.
No bull and I am forever stuck with the dreaded toilet board of a Marine Marksman even after shooting 9 rounds in the space of three minutes at 500 yards because of slow service in the butts.
To be fair if I had been a better shot at the 200 or 300 yard line I would have finally rid myself of the toilet board at my last rifle range, but there for an instant sharpshooter was mine if I just performed a miracle.
But it was not to be, or is it possible to earn the badge another way.
Say like at a shooting competition for veterans on a Marine Corps League rifle team?
Or am I still a Lousy shot?